Three Startups Join New IN2 Cohort Advancing Reliability in Built Environment
This Year’s Startups Are Focused on Energy Efficiency and Reliability in Buildings
Efficient buildings are the focus of this year’s Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN2) cohort. The $55 million energy technology program—funded by Wells Fargo & Company and coadministered by NREL—welcomed three startups to its next cohort in the Emerging Tech track.
These startups target energy efficiency and reliability in how commercial buildings are heated and cooled: a thermal energy storage system designed to optimize building heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) equipment; technologies that passively reduce indoor building temperatures by utilizing the sky; and a diagnostic platform that detects performance anomalies in air conditioners and heat pumps.
IN2 accelerates implementation and scaling of technologies in built-environment and infrastructure sectors. Since its inception in 2014, IN2 has supported 77 startups with up to $250,000 each in nondilutive funding from Wells Fargo alongside NREL technical assistance to validate technologies and support the path to market. These 77 companies have raised more than $2.6 billion in follow-on funding.
“This cohort reflects a focused effort to strengthen America’s grid by supporting building-level independence and operational continuity, directly addressing rising demand from sectors like data centers,” said Sarah Derdowski, IN2 program manager at NREL. “Each company is delivering practical solutions that cut long-term costs while improving reliability against new load growth and extreme weather. We’re proud to accelerate their progress and scale solutions that safeguard the grid while delivering value across the built environment.”
For this cohort, IN2 invited NREL’s Channel Partners to refer high-potential startups whose technologies support sustained building operation during grid outages, peak-load events, or extreme conditions, including energy storage, smart grid management platforms, passive building load reduction, or innovations that integrate fuel as a backup.
After a rigorous application process, including evaluations by NREL researchers, Wells Fargo leadership, and IN2’s External Advisory Board, the following startups were selected:
- MicroEra Power
- SkyCool Systems
- Verv Energy.
MicroEra Power
Heating, ventilating, and air conditioning are peak loads—everyone needs heat on the coldest nights in February or cooling on the hottest days in August. With growing need for power from data centers, reindustrialization, and general economic growth, energy storage helps to manage the peaks and valleys of electricity supply and demand.
MicroEra Power offers their tunable thermal energy storage system as a solution—one that is safer, more efficient, and more durable than lithium-ion batteries and requires one-tenth of the energy output of hot or chilled water storage. This makes it highly attractive for urban applications.
Their system shifts building HVAC loads to less expensive off-peak periods and is 20% more efficient, CEO and Cofounder Ellie Rusling said. That efficiency comes with minimal water requirements compared to evaporative cooling.
“We have efficiency gains and capital expenses that are much lower because we downsized the heat pump or chiller. And the system is relevant to both new builds and retrofits,” she said.
“Our materials cost pennies on the dollar compared to lithium. They can be domestically sourced,” Rusling said. “They have no performance degradation over decades of use. And at the end of life, they can be recaptured and repurposed without the environmental impact of lithium batteries. Add in the tunability of the system, which stores heat in winter and cooling in summer, there is high annual utilization.”
The system can also benefit geothermal heating and cooling by allowing for downsizing of the ground loop and leading to large capital cost savings.
Through the IN2 program, MicroEra Power will vet its system performance to showcase its efficiency, its deep storage capacity, and the reliability of the system’s controls and performance.
“We want to alleviate the perceived risk in the marketplace,” Rusling said. “We’re attacking a big problem in an economical and creative way.”
SkyCool Systems
Traditionally, buildings are cooled by running chillers or by evaporating water. SkyCool Systems wants to do things differently: using the cold of outer space to passively cool buildings.
SkyCool has created a material that acts as a supercool surface.
“Think of a cool roof,” CEO Arjun Saroya said. “You’re trying to keep heat out of a building. Traditional materials might be 20°–40°F above air temperature. Our material is 10°–15°F below air temperature, which has huge implications for the thermal comfort inside a building.”
Conventional cool roofs and walls are always hotter than the air temperature during the day because they absorb heat from the sun. “What SkyCool has created is a way for roofs to maintain their nighttime temperatures but during the day,” Cofounder and Chief Technology Officer Eli Goldstein said.
By a complex cooling effect, the roof material prevents heat from entering the roofs of buildings and thereby alleviates cooling needs inside. The material is cost-effective, with 90% lower operating costs than an HVAC system, Saroya said. Their focus is on large buildings—like warehouses—that are becoming too hot to work in and require effective methods for rejecting heat absorbed by their large roofs. But the concept has potential residential applications as well.
“To be a scalable business, we need to provide something that’s a pain pill, not a vitamin: something that’s needed by the world,” Goldstein said. “Keeping spaces cool when there is no electricity is just the beginning. At scale, these materials can reverse heat islands. It’s about adaptation and reliable cooling.”
In addition to the roofing material, SkyCool produces cooling panels that passively cool fluids in cooling systems for cold chain, industrial, and data center applications. They achieve 15%–40% energy savings, provide additional cooling capacity, and allow for large reductions in power load.
SkyCool will use the IN2 opportunity to model the impact of the materials on buildings, with the ability to model effects for specific buildings. The company wants to develop open-source computational models that can estimate the value of installing their materials in the built environment.
“The implications are profound,” Saroya said. “You’re able to create cooling out of the sky, which is not something that’s been done before. We feel that, eventually, a passive, non-energy-intensive, non-water-intensive solution is going be inevitable.”
Verv Energy
Verv Energy developed a machine learning technology to detect coolant leaks in air-conditioning systems before they become a problem. The technology gathers high-resolution electrical energy data at the component level to detect faults and energy insights.
“What sets us apart is that we sample data tens of thousands of times per second, allowing us to see another level of resolution,” CEO and Founder Peter Davies said. “The energy signatures we capture correlate with air-conditioning component changes, letting us track degradation over time and quantify refrigerant leaks.”
The machine learning runs continuously in the background, flagging anomalies in the power usage or equipment. As its dataset grows, Verv Energy’s system gets smarter, guiding a shift to prioritized predictive maintenance and communicating cost implications.
Verv Energy will perform full validation of their technology through the IN2 program. They will also utilize test results to refine their processes.
Currently, they have two active pilots: with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and with the City Greens Community Farm in Los Angeles. They hope to build off the momentum from these projects to expand deployments.
“IN2 validation strengthens Verv Energy’s case for broader adoption,” Commercial Director Derek Stoops said. “In a crowded market, an independent seal of approval is a game changer.”
IN2 has offered this game-changing opportunity to 77 companies, 21% of which exited the program via acquisition or initial public offering.
Learn more about the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator.
Last Updated May 28, 2025